The Many Faces of Anxiety: Does Anxiety Have a Grip on Your Life?

186 Pages·2013·0.58 MB·English

by  Susan Rau Stocker

THE MANY FACES OF ANXIETY
DOES ANXIETY HAVE A GRIP ON YOUR
LIFE?
SUSAN RAU STOCKER
i
The Many Faces of Anxiety
© 2013 Susan Stocker
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechan-
ical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information
or storage retrieval system without permission from the publish-
er.
Every effort has been made to make this book as complete and
accurate as possible, but no warranty or fitness is implied. The
information is provided on an “as is” basis. The authors and
the publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to
any person or entity with respect to any loss or damages arising
from the information contained in this book.
Written by: Susan Rau Stocker
Editor: Malvina T. Rau
Layout: Tyler Nash
Cover Design: Bob D’Amico & Shannon Mattiza
Published by: Holy Macro! Books, Box 82, Uniontown OH
44685, USA
Distributed by: Independent Publishers Group, Chicago, IL
First Printing: September 2012. Printed in USA
ISBN: 978-1-61547-016-7 (Print); 978-1-61547-207-9 (PDF);
978-1-61547-107-2 (Kindle); 978-1-61547-328-1 (ePub)
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION .............................................................v
DORA ................................................................................1
BRAD ..............................................................................17
MIKE ...............................................................................27
KATIE .............................................................................37
PAULA ............................................................................51
HERB ..............................................................................71
RETE ...............................................................................83
AMANDA .......................................................................99
BECKY ..........................................................................111
VIRGINIA .....................................................................125
GREGORY ....................................................................143
SUSAN ..........................................................................157
Possible Indicators of Anxiety ......................................167
Symptoms of Anxiety ....................................................169
Notes to Therapists ........................................................171
Ideas from Bill Blocksom .............................................177
About Susan Rau Stocker ..............................................179
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INTRODUCTION
When we humans give a speech or pet a snake, most of us
feel anxious. If we get pulled over by the police or draped with
a paper bib in the dentist’s office, we recognize the pounding
heart and sweaty palms as anxiety. A first date, a job interview,
our yearly review at work, reliably produce anxiety, as well. The
Many Faces of Anxiety is not about these isolated but predictable
life experiences.
When there is a cause, like a strange noise during the night, a
stranded car on a dark road, or a trip to the emergency room, we
expect anxiety. Since there is a cause, there is an effect: anxiety.
Anxiety is the body’s warning system: pay attention, be alert,
get ready for trouble, it reminds us. Our eyes pop open, and we
straighten our spines. We try to prepare ourselves for the whir of
the drill or the humorless stare of the police officer. Which things
cause us anxiety, and how much of it, depend on our personal
likes and dislikes. But there are events and situations and in-laws
and outlaws which create anxiety for each of us.
The anxiety we are talking about in this book has no specific
observable cause. Oh, it might have had a cause, or some group
of causes, in the past, but now the anxiety comes out of nowhere,
it comes when and as it pleases, and it stays until it chooses to go.
Anxiety is the feeling we get in our chests, our throats, our
heads, our shoulders, our backs, even our knees and toes, which
tightens us. Our chests feel constricted, our throats swell shut,
our heads feel as though all the neurons are firing randomly but at
once. Our backs, necks, toes and knees are stiff, tingly, non-fluid
and uneasy. We’re on guard. But why? No toddler is standing
on the edge of a cliff. We’re not tied to the train track. We’re not
naked in front of the Chamber of Commerce. But we feel as anx-
ious as if we were in one of these situations. We feel vulnerable,
powerless, exposed and unprotected.
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vi THE MANY FACES OF ANXIETY
We feel that danger is imminent, but we can’t pinpoint where
it’s coming from. We have a sense of impending doom, but there
is nothing on the horizon or the radar screen to support it. We’re
shaking and shivering, sweating and swaying. We’re out of bal-
ance, out of rhythm and out of sorts. But there is no apparent
reason and no present cause for these feelings.
Anxiety is that out-of-whack, things aren’t okay, sense of
dread and upset that can make us feel certifiably crazy. Anxiety
is a feeling inside us, and we try not to let it show on the outside
because it’s nuts. And it makes us feel nuts. It’s inexplicable and
unreasonable. It bears no correlation to how much we’ve slept
or what we’ve eaten or where we are or whom we’re with. For a
client’s own description of anxiety, see Olivia’s case study in The
Many Faces of PTSD.
And now, let me introduce you to anxiety the same way I
learned about it: one case at a time. Meet Dora, my first and finest
teacher.
DORA
Her Story
She found her way into the Victim Assistance Program office
where I was an intern. At Victim Assistance we had a counselor
for domestic violence and two additional counselors who worked
with victims of other crimes. But since this woman was barely
verbal, they didn’t know to whom to assign her. No one could
figure out who she was, what had happened to her, or what she
wanted. So, they assigned her to me, who, at 40, was the new kid
on the block.
I was totally unprepared for and unqualified for Dora. But,
as it happens sometimes, clients are clearly so wounded and so
fragile, that once you begin with them, if you even say hello to
them, you have no choice but to continue and try to get yourself
up to speed with their unconventional and unintentional on-the-
job training. To send such a vulnerable client elsewhere is per-
ceived by them as yet another rejection, another abandonment.
For me the hardest part of working with Dora was staying
awake. I was a single mom raising three boys, working four part
time jobs and completing a graduate degree.
Anytime I encountered silence, I immediately fell asleep. An
hour with Dora was 50 minutes of silence interspersed with may-
be 10 minutes of information that required a lot of filling in of
the blanks.
Dora’s story told itself haltingly and cryptically. Dora had an
older brother who was married and the father of two children.
Dora adored her niece and nephew and babysat whenever possi-
ble. God only knows how she did it. She herself still lived with
her mother and father. She didn’t work; she was unable. I would
not have left my children with her.
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2 THE MANY FACES OF ANXIETY
Dora’s mother was a mysterious creature who lived with Dora
but played no part in her life, except that apparently she cooked.
As far as I could tell no meals were ever eaten at Dora’s house,
but there was food available to be consumed, always in solitude.
Dora’s father, on the other hand, was ever-present in Dora’s
life, and he played a continual and despicable role in her life
drama. He introduced Dora to drugs, specifically heroin. He was
her supplier. When she did what he wanted her to do, she was
rewarded with a needle and a fix. When she didn’t do what he
wanted her to do, she was treated to the initial stages of with-
drawal. Before long, she complied with his wishes.
His wishes, what he wanted her to do, became disgustingly
apparent. He wanted her to have sex with whomever he brought
home. If she was reluctant or expressed repulsion, she was given
more drugs, perhaps some Xanax or some prescription pain-kill-
ers, something to numb her resistance. The sexual activity was
entirely at the whim of the buyer. Whatever the buyer wanted, the
buyer could have, including sodomy or sadomasochistic sex, and
this could be photographed or videotaped, as the buyer wished,
all if the price was right.
Dora had been taught by her father how to please these men.
Her father was her first and most constant sexual predator. He
taught her to be compliant, and he made sure she knew how to
endure abuse. He made certain that she was “well-trained.” Pain,
punishment, and the withdrawal of that to which one is addicted,
are powerful motivators.
Dora’s father worked in a factory, so he had plenty of poten-
tial friends to bring around. What they paid depended on what
they wanted. Dora received none of the money, of course. If she
had the audacity to complain, her heroin supply dried up. By the
time she was in eighth grade, she was dependably silent and re-
liably docile.
DORA 3
She acquired a new and additional perpetrator that eighth
grade year. She walked out of her junior high school in the usual
victim walk, head down, feet shuffling, and from under her low-
ered eyelids she couldn’t help but notice a snazzy white limou-
sine.
She realized that on various days different girls were invited
to get into the backseat and when they accepted, the limo sped
away.
One day she was chosen. She recalled feeling special. Finally,
she was going to be the one selected. When asked if she’d like to
“go for a ride,” she silently nodded yes and slid in the open door.
Off went the limo with a dreamy, happy Dora in the backseat.
She hadn’t paid any attention to where they drove, she was
just delighted to be riding in a limo. What eighth grade loser like
Dora wouldn’t be? Finally, the other girls would envy her.
The limo stopped at a park she didn’t recognize. She could
see out, but the windows were tinted so no one could see in. The
limo driver crawled in the back seat with her and raped her. She
was used to it. She wasn’t even surprised. She was raped a couple
nights a week, usually more than once a night. She didn’t usually
get a limo ride out of it.
Once it was clear to the limo driver that he’d get no resistance
from this girl, he upped the ante. What he really liked was the
feel of warm blood, and so he started cutting her vagina. Not all
the time. Just some of the time.
Dora never knew if this would be the day she had a little ride,
the day she got raped, the day she performed oral sex, or the day
she got sliced and bled.
What this new uncertainty did was throw her even farther
over the edge of sanity. Already she never knew which days her
dad would bring a friend home, which days two or three friends,
or which days the niece and nephew would appear and all would
4 THE MANY FACES OF ANXIETY
be familial and seemingly normal. But now the cutting in the
back of the limo, with its added tension of when and how and
how bad, resulted in debilitating anxiety. Dora’s panic attacks
and episodes, as her family called them, rendered her helpless,
vulnerable, non-responsive in a corner, or hiding behind her
clothes in her closet.
Then, with the resiliency of a trapped animal, she figured out
how to calm her anxiety. If she cut her own vagina and made
herself bleed, she could relax afterward. It was a brilliant, des-
perate solution. Whenever she caused her own traumatic event,
which was a re-enactment of the trauma she endured from the
limo driver, she could get herself to a different place in the anxi-
ety cycle and experience the aftermath of relief.